A scary tale has been passed down through generations of New Orleans rock 'n’ rollers for more than 30 years now: that time the Misfits, the theatrical horror-punk band founded by Glenn Danzig in the late ‘70s, got arrested, during Halloween season 1982, in a Crescent City cemetery.

It’s a true story. Mike IX Williams, who six years later would form the well-known sludge-metal band Eyehategod, was there. It was Williams, and two other New Orleans-area teenagers, who, after the Misfits’ performance at Tupelo’s Tavern on Oak Street (formerly Jed’s), brought Danzig, bassist Jerry Only and other band members to St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 in the wee hours of Oct. 18, 1982, to look at New Orleans’ unique aboveground tombs – and who were arrested along with the band after neighbors called the police.

Williams (who, with Eyehategod, plays the House of Shock this Halloween night) shares his side of the story below. But first, here’s the original brief, unbylined report that ran on page 10 of The Times-Picayune/The States-Item’s Section 1, on Tuesday, Oct. 19, 1982. In its entirety, it read:

Punk-rock musicians arrested in cemetery

Four members of a punk-rock group and 14 of their fans who claimed to be looking for the tomb of a voodoo queen were arrested early Monday morning at a downtown cemetery, police said.

At the time of their arrest at St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, the members of the band called the Misfits were still wearing makeup, including dramatic facial painting, and one woman wore a black dress, fishnet hose and chains, said Carlos Diaz of Metairie, who was one of those arrested.

Diaz said the musicians, who are based in New Jersey, were looking for above-ground graves, including the tomb of voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

But according to tradition, she is buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

Fifteen of those arrested, including members of the Misfits, were adults and were booked with criminal trespass. They are free on $75 bond until their arraignment at noon Tuesday before Municipal Judge Joseph R. Bossetta.

Three 16-year-olds – a girl and two boys – were turned over to juvenile authorities.

Diaz said the Misfits had gone to St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 after finishing a concert.

About 3:45 a.m., police said, neighbors near the cemetery complained to authorities about noise, and police arrived.

Police said they found the two juvenile boys wearing T-shirts displaying skeletons and the word Necros, the name of the Misfits’ opening act.

Diaz claimed police hit one of the women, but that allegation was not substantiated.

A Misfits album, “The Misfits Walk Among Us,” features such songs as “Twenty Eyes,” “All Hell Breaks Loose,” “I Turned Into A Martian,” “Night of the Living Dead,” Brain Eaters,” “Violent World,” and “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Somebody?”*

The album also features an offer to buy a Misfits T-shirt that shows President Kennedy at the moment of his assassination.

After a show at Tupelo's Tavern in 1982, horror-punk band the Misfits was famously arrested in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.Courtesy Pat Roig

Reached on the phone 31 years and 12 days after the incident, Mike Williams fleshed out the story.

“We were the three teenagers that were mentioned in the article as wearing skeleton T-shirts,” he said. He and his friends Mike and Yvonne* had driven to Houston the previous night to see the Misfits play.

“It was at a club called the Island, which was like the CBGB’s of Houston,” he said. “We hung out with them that night. We were the only ones kind of making a scene and jumping around, so they noticed us.”

The Misfits caravan'd back to New Orleans with the group of teens they had befriended, and wound up staying at Williams’ friend's house. The band’s aesthetic was based around spooky, campy horror-movie imagery, and they were entranced by the city’s haunted reputation.

“They had never seen an above-ground tomb like we have in New Orleans, and they really wanted to go check them out – plus the whole legend of Marie Laveau,” Williams said.

“It was supposed to be just a few of us,” he said, “but the rumor got out and then it was ‘Party at the cemetery!’ which was not a good thing at all.” The original smallish group of Williams and the other two teens, Mike “Hatch Boy” Hatch of the band Shell Shock, and the Misfits grew to almost 30 people, he said, including several concertgoers that Williams didn’t know.

“The gates were open, and we just walked in, looking at all the tombs and caved-in mausoleums. They thought it was so creepy and interesting, and they loved it,” he said. Many of the others that had followed the group downtown, Williams said, though, were drinking and yelling, which attracted the attention of neighbors, considering the hour. Plus, the Misfits’ Econoline tour van was not subtle: It was bright red, and boldly painted with a black Spiderman web logo.

Those who weren’t able to skedaddle -– including all four Misfits -- were lined up against the cemetery wall by the officers and arrested, Williams said.

“Yvonne had a Mohawk, and they asked her, ‘Are you a girl or a boy?’” he said. “She was 15 years old, so she probably did look like a boy, with the Mohawk.” As Carlos Diaz claimed in 1982, Williams said, an officer struck the girl, though the original Times-Picayune story reported that the allegation was not substantiated.

“I realized that this was pretty serious,” he said, “that they were going to make examples of us. The rumor got out later that we were grave-robbing, or performing voodoo rituals. But we were just there hanging out with the Misfits.”

The teens, Williams said, were released on their own recognizance and fined for trespassing. The band was arraigned, and forfeited their bonds in order to make the next gig on the tour schedule, in Florida.

The band members returned in early 1983 to play another show. As Williams remembers it, that performance was scheduled because the band had to appear in court in New Orleans. On Oct. 24, 1982, though, in a follow-up piece that also addressed complaints filed against the arresting officers by seven of those arrested, The Times-Picayune reported that the charges against the Misfits had been dropped.

31 years later, the incident has attained the status of local punk-rock myth. It’s not infrequent, Williams said, that he’ll overhear the story being told by others who, for dramatic effect, place themselves at the scene.

“There are people out there who claim they were there, but who were most definitely not there,” he said. “I guess it’s so long ago now, maybe people think they were.”